in the news...again...

israeli jets destroy bridge on a main road in gaza--according to israeli spokesman, they did this not to punish civilians by restricting inflow of food , water and medicines --but instead to prevent palestinian militia from moving captured israeli soldier out of the area--um dude--if that's your plan to get your p.o.w. back--i don't think it'll work...

as in customary for the editor of deskRat chronicles , upon waking we tune into the news --usually the BBC and NPR to survey what has taken place overnight while this side of the world slumbered ...And as expected , the ham-handed israelis have once again over-reacted and have added to their outrageous gaza invasion --with its attacks on civilian infrastructure including electrical power stations , roads , bridges and drinking water pipelines --all in violation of the geneva accords prohibiting military attacks upon infrastructure vital to civilian life, by the way --we find this morning that the ever pugnacious israelis have added to their excesses , the arrest of numerous members of the palestinian government affiliated with ruling party hamas.

while listening to mainstream media endlessly spin the story and play up the "brutal terrorist kidnapping of the 19 year old baby-faced israeli soldier" and restraining the urge to puke , i'm wondering , am i the only person hearing this hog-swill who asks how in the world does western media find the gall to call a soldier--a tank gunner , captured in a military operation by paletinian militias against a military target who has taken part in the shelling of palestinian civilians--a "terrorist kidnapping" ?

when in battle , one army's soldiers capture another army's soldiers --they are called prisoners of war --not "kidnapping victims".

This was obviously a small battle--a very small skirmish of little military importance in terms of final outcome in this war --the israeli "invincible" defence forces obviously lost this skirmish , and now the media tries to spin what is a clear propaganda victory for the palestinians into a crime of "terrorist kidnapping"

gimme a break !

after israel these past weeks killed in gaza numerous palestinians including a family and kids on a picnic --the palestinians responded and attacked the soldiers of the army that had been mercilessly shelling them with artillery fire , blockading them by air and sea and starving the palestinians by witholding the fifty million dollars a month collected in customs revenues and due the democratically elected palestinian government .

the israelis have slaughtered civilians without hesitation in their efforts to kill off and assassinate any palestinian leadership who won't lay down and give blessings to the zionist ethnic cleansing of the palestinian people-- including the outrageous israeli assassination by helicpoter gunship of a blind cleric in his wheelchair on his way to morning prayers .

hamas to its credit , called for and held a ceasefire for 16 months ...prohibiting attacks on targets in israel--while the israelis continued the entire time of the ceasefire not only to kill and arrest members of hamas , but to grab more land by building a huge wall and at the same time , continue and accelerate the building and expansion of israeli settlements on the disputed westbank territories --territories that the united nations has repeatedly ordered israel to leave and give back to the people israel took them from in the 1967 war.

this one captured israeli soldier --a mere p.o.w. in any other conflict-- is a smoke screen for an invasion of gaza that had to have been planned months in advance...and the simultaneous violation of syrian airspace by israeli jets -doing a fly-by over the syrian presidential palace --low to avoid radar and at above sonic speeds to cause huge bomb-like sonic booms that terrorize civilian populations-- is nothing short of extreme provacation that considering the Us presence and occupation in iraq and afghanistan along with recent regional defense alliances between syria and iran --is a step towards a widening regional conflict reaching from the mediterranean sea to the persian gulf and beyond...

is that what israel ultimately wants ?



* after having long observed a palestinian basic ineffectiveness at handling western media , it was interesting reading this portion of a "democracy now" interview by amy goodman with ali abunimah and shlomo ben ami...another small but clear media victory for the underdog side in this middleast conflict --any lessons to be learned by those of the african diaspora in our long campaign for justice ?

AMY GOODMAN: We're joined on the telephone from Spain by Shlomo Ben-Ami. He's the former Foreign Minister of Israel and a former member of the Israeli Knesset. He wrote the book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. We're also joined on the line by Ali Abunimah, founder of Electronic Intifada, electronicintifada.net, speaking to us from Jordan. Ali Abunimah, can you talk about the latest news?

ALI ABUNIMAH: Yes. Good morning, Amy. I'm here in Amman, Jordan, and watching the situation very closely. And it reminds me of the eulogy that Rabbi Yakov Perin gave for Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli settler who murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994. He said, "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." And this kind of racism is clearly on display in the Israeli reaction to the capture of its soldier in the Gaza Strip by the Palestinian resistance. In fact, last week here in Amman, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said explicitly that the lives of Israeli Jews are more important than the lives of Palestinians.

And we see that reflected also in the world reaction. Is it not astonishing that the entire world knows the name and face of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, while the hundreds of Palestinian children held in Israel's dungeons, not to mention 10,000 adult prisoners, thousands held without charge and trial, abducted from their homes in the middle of the night by Israeli occupation forces, remain nameless and faceless before a silent world?

And I want to say that it's very deeply painful to me as a Palestinian that while Palestinians in Gaza are demonstrating, the families of prisoners are demonstrating to urge the resistance not to release the soldier until their prisoners and hostages held by Israel are released, that the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas rushed to condemn the legitimate conventional military operation carried out by the resistance and rushed to send his security forces to hunt for the captured soldier on Israel's behalf, when never once in history has he deployed his forces to protect and defend his own people against Israel's daily massacres. It's becoming unavoidable to many Palestinians, if not most, that Abbas is engaged in open collaboration with the occupation.

And a final point, that as far as Israel is concerned, it is rapidly becoming a failed state, unable to learn any lessons from its past. It's now repeating in Gaza and the West Bank all the mistakes of its invasion and occupation of Lebanon. And I believe that if it doesn't drastically and dramatically change course, it will self-destruct within a decade, perhaps taking everyone else in the region with it. It has become an apartheid pariah state, and its leaders are deluded in thinking that they can bludgeon the indigenous Palestinian population, who are now the majority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, into submission and servitude.

I call on brave Israelis to understand the lessons, which brave white South Africans understood, and to engage in a voluntary process with Palestinians of dismantling completely, starting today, the system of racist laws, walls and settler colonies that are imprisoning both people in perpetual and endless and escalating bloodshed. It needs to stop now.

AMY GOODMAN: Ali Abunimah speaking to us from Amman. Let's turn to the former Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami. Your response?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Response to what?

AMY GOODMAN: To what Ali Abunimah just said?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: No, no. I'm not going to respond to that. If you have any particular question with regard to this operation, with regard to the abduction, with regard of the political situation on the ground -- I'm not going to go into that wider analysis about South Africa and what have you.